Portfolio
Portrait,Personal projects
Portraits of young people made during the summer of 2020. I was interested in how my son and his peers were doing after the shut down of the bars and cafes in Amsterdam due to Covid-19 and invited them for portrait sessions in my studio.
These portraits are about father-daughter relationships. It is an essay on my search for a woman's special bond with her father. The similarity and contrast between people who are closely related yet of the opposite sex hold a certain intensity, which I tried to convey in my photographs. For each portrait, the daughter chose a location based on her memories. The background and how father and daughter pose together resulted in the following images.Â
Personal projects
A small selection of the more than a thousand photos made with my first digital camera purchased in 2008
Portraits of department store employees dressed as Zwarte Piet (Black Piet), made in 2011 in downtown Amsterdam. Zwarte Piet is the helper of Sinterklaas, and together they deliver presents to Dutch children on the evening of 5 December. With each passing year, this winter festival elicits more and more heated debates in The Netherlands regarding the historical role and identity of Zwarte Piet. In the meantime, major department stores no longer hire people to dress up as Zwarte Piet.
During a visit to my home state Southern California, I stood daily with my camera in busy public areas where I talked to and photographed women passing by. The portraits were made within a few minutes of our first meeting and are a study of my fascination for beauty ideals and the outward appearance of people.
In 2004 the magazine Vrij Nederland published a four-page spread entitled: 'Everyone will be beautiful,' with text by Tanny Dobbelaar in their summer issue. In 2005 The portraits were shown during the Dutch photography festival BredaPhoto entitled: 'Reconstructed Beauty.' The prints for this exhibition were made possible by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds/Tijlfonds.
This series of black and white photos are of young women working the lunch shift in the striptease bar 'Boobie Rock' in Houston, Texas, USA. Made in 1986, I photographed the women in the dressing room of the bar.
I was 21 years old, around the same age as the women in the images. The first time I showed it to a gallery in 1989, the gallerist felt it would be bad for my reputation. In a few of the photos, my reflection in the makeup mirror is visible, making it evident that I also was one of the dancers.
At the time, I felt the only way to get close to the women I wanted to portray was to become one of them. I assumed that dancers would be poorly educated and had no other choice. In many cases, nothing was further from the truth. More than a few women were financing their college educations through stripping.
Now, 36 years later, I feel that it is a timeless body of work showing the vulnerability of young women. It also taught me not to judge others or make assumptions—something I have used in my practice as a photographer since making this series.
Portraits made throughout the years of family, friends, and people I have met along the way. Sometimes for a specific project, other times commissioned by the person portrayed, also during fleeting moments when seeing a passerby or scene that interests me.
Dutch urban development,Personal projects
During my first visit to The Netherlands, I became fascinated by the desolate Eastern Harbor area of Amsterdam. Once a busy industrial port, by the 1980's it was inhabited mostly by squatters, artists, and boat people. For many, it was considered a 'no go area' at the edge of the city. In the 1990s, urban development started, and the area transformed into a new residential area.
In 1990 the Amsterdam City Archives purchased seven 30x40cm baryta prints.
Studio7n uses functional cookies only
Prima, ik wil naar Adrienne Norman Fotografie